The present invention relates to a method for installing an ignition system, and the ignition system.
An ignition system consists of a data reading and storage unit, a so-called logger, to which a plurality of ignition devices (fuses) are connected via a bus line, which ignition devices are ignited in a predetermined chronological order on the basis of an ignition command from an ignition unit connected upstream of the logger or from a triggering device, a so-called blaster. The bus line may in addition to the transmission of the signal also serve to supply energy to the ignition devices, in particular to charge up the ignition capacitors. Such ignition systems are used in the opencast mining of, mineral resources, for example ores and coal, and in the rock and earth industry.
Ignition systems are known that use ignition devices that have for example an identification number allocated during the course of manufacture or that have a barcode as identification code. This identification code may also be stored in the electronics of the ignition device. By means of this identification code the ignition device can be accessed by the programming and storage electronics of the logger if its functions, for example a delay time, are to be stored.
In the installation of an ignition system the spatial position of an ignition device in terms of its surroundings, i.e. its geographical position, is not yet fixed for the specific application. In order to ensure that the ignition devices are connected to the ignition system according to a predetermined blasting plan, extreme care is required on the part of the user. For this purpose a specially trained person systematically has to carry out a sequential connection (compulsory sequence) of each ignition device to the bus line of the ignition system, i.e. logging. This procedure is described for example in WO 96/16311. The ignition devices that are connected to the ignition system initially all have the same time delay. During the coupling procedure the identification codes allocated to the ignition devices are input manually into a portable intermediate store or are electronically read out and stored by means of a data scanner. In addition the position of each ignition device in the ignition circuit as well as the delay time associated therewith are input into this intermediate store. These intermediately stored data are read from the intermediate store into the logger once all the ignition devices have been connected up.
The person connecting the ignition devices has to carry out the ignition programming in the field with extreme care under all weather conditions, which means that a blasting operation is a very time-consuming process. If an ignition device is overlooked during the logging, this results in a time-consuming reprogramming of the already input data. The object of the invention is to simplify the installation of an ignition system.